O, Villain! O, Treachery! Then Again, It Makes The Yankees Look Stupid…

He agreed to a $28 million, one-year contract that will start when he is added to the major league roster for his first start, most likely in three to four weeks. Clemens will earn about $18.5 million under the deal, which will cost the Yankees approximately $7.4 million in additional luxury tax, meaning they are investing about $26 million in a seven-time Cy Young Award winner who will turn 45 in August. ~AP

As longtime readers of the blog will know, I am an Astros fan and have been since I was five years old.  When Clemens, a native Texan, came out of retirement in Houston a few years back, it was generally understood (at least publicly) that he was only doing this because playing in Houston afforded him a chance to play baseball while being able to spend more time with his family.  Apparently that was nothing more than a lot of PR garbage, and I should have realised as much at the time. 

Now he has turned his back on his hometown and gone to serve the dreadful Yankees, who are to the integrity of baseball what Dick Cheney is to responsible foreign policy.  Of course, it’s not hard to see why: any ballclub stupid enough to throw that much money at a 45-year old pitcher deserves to be taken to the cleaners, and forcing the Yankees to cough up $26 million for one year’s work (minus spring training!) from Clemens is the sort of karmic retribution that George Steinbrenner undoubtedly deserves but so rarely receives.  In that sense, I can appreciate what Clemens is doing, and I can take some pleasure knowing that the Yankees have unloaded enormous amounts of money to destroy the Astros’ rotation (they took Pettite before this) but will ultimately not benefit from the expense.